here's to the lost boys
by themusespeaks
Summary: A collection of ASL ficlets. Gen and slash. [ii] - All the ways they ask Sabo to stay; all the ways he wishes he could. [Alternate Timeline]
1. empires

Title: _empires_

Summary: They are children of the sea, kings of an empire of salt and filth and cold, forgotten things, but an empire nonetheless.

Rating: K

Pairing/s: None

* * *

_empires_

x

They are children of the sea, kings of an empire of salt and filth and cold, forgotten things, but an empire nonetheless.

Beneath them, the sprawling forest floor is still and silent, a sleeping beast. Another day hovers on the horizon to greet them splayed lazily on their backs, and Ace, breathless and wide-awake, watches the colors inch up his toes and the brim of their hats, leak through the cracks of the canopy above. One day, he thinks, they'll get a boat and set out to sea for their promised adventure. They'll fall asleep not on hard dirt but to the song of the ocean, softly cradled by the waves. Somewhere, he would search and find and _live_ and Luffy would be King and Sabo would laugh and his laugh would be infinite. One day, they wouldn't just be boys with big dreams and dirty feet. One day, he thinks, they'll be free. Freer than anyone.

But here, in this tiny patch of riddled earth, they are kings. There are still places to conquer, lands to lay siege to, stores of treasure to pilfer. Beside him, Sabo snickers and places a tangled wreath of branches on his head. A crown, Luffy tells him, the sun in his teeth, and the three of them chase each other into the day.

It's enough for now.

* * *

A/N: _Here's to the lost boys_ will be updated weekly, at the very least, until the ideas run out - which I think don't think will be happening any time soon :D Hope you enjoyed!


	2. as fast as you can

Title: as fast as you can

Summary: all the ways they ask Sabo to stay; all the ways he wishes he could. [Alternate Timeline]

Rating: K+

Genre: Angst/Tragedy/Family

Pairings: None

A/N: Forcing yourself out of a writer's block is one of the most painful things ever, I swear. I have to admit, writing bits of this fic was like squeezing out kidney stones. Anyway, here it is, in all its un-beta'd glory – I hope you enjoy!

* * *

_as fast as you can_

x

_**[eight]**_

"Luffy, you're supposed to savor it, not gulp everything down," Sabo gives him a look that's half amusement, half exasperation. "Meaning –" he snatches the box of chocolate truffles from the boy's grasp and places it on the bed next to him before he can take another swipe. "—one at a time. _Slowly_."

For the past few days his brothers had taken to sneaking into his room at random hours during the day, even after he had clearly told them to come strictly in evening, and the evening _only_, lest they be caught by any of the mammoth mass of servants his family kept lurking everywhere. As if hearing this thought Luffy grins, teeth flecked with dark brown and proceeds to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and swipe it on the nearest surface – Ace's black, tattered shorts.

"Hey!" cries the owner of said shorts, smacking him on the head. As expected, it snaps unnaturally to the side and comes flapping back. Luffy sighs contentedly, stretches on all fours and buries his cheek against the thick, blue carpet of Sabo's room – blue, because it reminds him of the sky, because it reminds him of the ocean – and swims in it. "Those tussles were so good."

"_Truffles_, you idiot. You finished them all too. " Ace shoots a sad glance at the pathetic-looking carton.

"Nah, I left two," Luffy raises a floppy finger and points at the sheer parchment at the bottom of the box.

Sabo lifts the paper, and true enough, there are still two, pale green domes left. They are partly runny and almost squashed into a revolting, ill-colored mash, and with a grimace he realizes why their dear brother left it for them in the first place. "Seaweed," he announces, dry. "These are seaweed-filled."

With an outraged cry – "a _vegetable_, you selfish brat?" – Ace launches himself from his perch on Sabo's four-poster bed and dives arms outstretched at the little figure below him. It isn't long before it morphs into an all-out, mindless tickling match, Ace torturing Luffy's sides and him squawking and kicking and flailing chocolate-coated limbs everywhere.

"_Saboooo_, save me!" Not a single soul alive can resist those eyes, he knows this well, not even Dadan with her heart of stone, so he keeps his eyes to the side, giggling. Though truffle-less, revenge is still always sweet. He's cut short, however, when a hand grabs him by the collar and yanks him into the fray. They ignite into laughter, Ace's elbow digging into his side and Luffy's hands coming up to paint a sticky brown smudge along the side of Sabo's face; their hats disperse into the air, and amidst everything, Sabo suddenly becomes a pale doll between them – Freezing, they turn to look at him in question and watch morbidly as his expression wilts.

Somebody is knocking on his door.

He can't help the curse that comes unraveling from his lips. Without so much as looking at them, Sabo yanks both of his brothers by the arms and shoves them unceremoniously under his bed. "Coming, coming," he rises instantly, every knock battering in time with his chest and straightens whatever disaster his clothes had received earlier. _Knock knock_. One last fleeting glance – a rubber arm peeks obviously underneath. _Come on, guys_, he grits out, and shoves it harder into the dark.

"_Ow!"_

"_Shut. It."_

"Ace—_mph!_"

The knocking is insistent now; in three strides he crosses the distance and cracks open the door.

"Stelly," he says breathlessly, wary. He doesn't know whether to be relieved or not. "What do you want."

The pint-sized figure before him gives him a smile that manages to be all sweetness and malice at once. With long lashes, fat lips and a long, odd nose, Sabo always thought he looked like some sort of deformed alien bird. With stockings. "Still studying, brother? Why, I just wanted to check on you. I mean, I could hear _such_ a ruckus going on I was just wondering – " Stelly rises on his tiny, leather-clad toes to peer beyond Sabo's shoulder. When his view is blocked, he settles back down and the eerie smile is back on his face. "—what you were doing. I mean, isn't that what brothers do?"

He suppresses the urge puke. Then again, it wouldn't be too bad if that meant emptying his stomach all over Stelly's face. "She sent you, didn't she?"

"Who, mother?" Stelly purses his lips. "Well, I suppose –"

"Then everything is fine. I just, slipped, is all. Now get out." He swings the door close, but Stelly's boot comes against the frame before he can.

"If you don't have me do it, Father could always do it himself, you know." At that, Sabo remembers hard eyes and locked rooms and piles of books instead of toys and those piles of toys aflame, and his eyes widen imperceptibly. He fixes the boy the most heated glare he can muster, steps back and allows him to slither in.

"My, you've made quite a mess here, brother," Stelly says wondrously, eyeing the trashed box of sweets that lay on the carpet with barely concealed distaste. "You seem to be quite hungry, too."

"I was. And don't call me that."

Stelly gives another wry smile before turning on his heel to approach the window. The window where Ace and Luffy sneaked into his room this morning. The window they'd forgotten to shut.

"I- uh-" he babbles, mind scrambling for some valid excuse but knowing it's too late for any. He tries to scurry over but almost trips on a rubber arm that was stretching from beneath his bed and across the carpet, fingers straining for the last of the chocolates. Hastily, he kicks the offending hand back into place.

"_Ouch!"_

"What was that?" Stelly turns back, and to his horror, looks exactly where his brothers were hidden.

"Ouch!" he says, a little too high-pitched, and slaps a hand over his left forearm, inconspicuously sidling over. "An ant. Bit my arm. Must be attracted to the sweets," he finishes lamely.

Stelly blinks, and then begins to giggle – a nasal, staccato sound. Through the window, he peers at the streets below. The window slides shut with a final click. "You haven't been going to that filthy dump again, have you, brother?"

The disgust is so sudden and palpable that Sabo pauses before answering. "What? No, of course not. I made a deal."

"Really? Oh, that is so delightful to hear," Stelly glazes a look at him, folding his hands together. "Father will be so happy."

Sabo doesn't answer. He stares at the blocks of houses outside his window, counting the patterns. Red-yellow-gold-red-yellow-

"Don't look too sad, brother," he says in a tone that's probably meant to be comforting. "It'll be okay. It's not like you'll see them again, anyway."

Sabo can't breathe.

"Stop."

_Clop clop clop_. The sound of the soles of Stelly's boots as he passes him by and sinks into Sabo's mattress. "Have you heard?" he begins wistfully, and Sabo's feet go numb. "The new place we'll be going to will have _everything_. We'll go to a real school. And we'll live in a palace now. It'll be clean and perfect." _No no no shut up shutupshutup—_

"We'll meet new friends. We'll have a pool all to ourselves, with the ocean far away. You won't see this ugly dump again—"

"Shut _up_," he growls dangerously, bending to grab Stelly by the arm. But his gaze simply slides over his, glinting, perpetual smile in place. The bottom of his bed is still and silent.

"It'll be," and when Stelly finally fixes his eyes and smiles at him, Sabo can't help the bile rising from his throat. "a real adventure."

Their gaze falters; it's out, his little secret, crumbling in his chest. He feels putrid and disgusting, and he tries to turn away from himself. Stelly goes on about voyages and pianos and an engagement, and Sabo lets him. He knows he's already lost. It's minutes later when there's a soft knock on the door and a maid announces lunch that Stelly finally shuts his mouth, bounding out of the bed and scuttling to the door.

"By the way, you might want to wipe that," Stelly tells him as Sabo follows. His room feels like the bottom of the ocean, frigid and stifling and there's nothing he wants more but to get out _getout_— "You've got chocolate all over your face."

He doesn't. He wears it proudly up until dinner, wears it like a badge as he bows to his guests, until his father pulls him to the side and demands him to stop embarrassing him and start acting like the son of a noble that he is. Instead, he sticks out his tongue and darts back into his room, and the sound of outrage behind him is almost laughable until his stomach snaps angrily at him. It's a feeble act of defiance, he knows, something his brothers won't even know about. He does it anyway. What else can he do? It might be the only way he would be able to face his brothers again, tell them he fought for them, at the very, very least.

_**[thirteen]**_

He's known it for a while now. Eighty-seven days, to be exact. Eighty-seven days since he left his brothers' side and had been forced to read into the blueprint of his life every single day, trying to find a loophole but always coming up short. His room is cool and plush and comfortable and everything the dump isn't, but at night when he lies beneath oceans of sheets, even the air feels like a cold, iron cage pressing down around on him.

But then he looks at his brothers, watches as they scarf down the turkey he had sneaked out from the kitchen, here in his room, laughing and _alive_, and – he laughs with them too, because really, it's all that matters.

"Sabo, when will you come back with us?" Ace asks him, and it's the question he's been dreading all day, but he steels himself and looks right into his best friend's eyes and hopes he looks real enough.

"Not today, not yet," he tells him, watches his face darken, brows furrowing even deeper. "We have to wait for the right time, you know. Tomorrow, maybe." He loads his spoon with ammo and flings it at his little brother, just because. A little too early, Luffy sees it, angling his face to catch it, and the food disappears inside his maw with the rest.

"But that's what you said yesterday," Luffy whines, undeterred. With a pop, he slides a bone slicked clean from his mouth and drops it on the tray.

"Tomorrow," Sabo repeats, smiling, and hands him another big, meaty leg. Easy, easy – the worry is instantly wiped from Luffy's face and his mouth goes slack. "Tomorrow for sure."

_**[seven]**_

He sits cross-legged on the cold carpet floor. Counts the seconds for the pastel sun to slink back in its cradle in the sky and dissipate. Listlessly, he turns the dish before him and watches the silver edge catch moonlight. He hopes his brothers like brandied goose enough to forgive him.

The night stretches on, and he waits and waits and waits.

They never come.

_**[one-hundred and twelve]**_

"Let's run for it," Ace whispers, breathless, and strains out his hand. The air explodes around them.

The sun is in his eyes.

"Run, run!" Luffy laughs, another ocean all on its own, bubbling and spilling and frothing over.

He runs.

_**[six]**_

He should've known the silence wouldn't last long. His brothers were Ace and Luffy after all – the most stubborn and persistent people he had ever met. He should've known what to expect.

But then he wakes up to the most high-pitched, ear-splitting scream ever, and he digs himself out of the sheets to scramble down the stairs – in only his underwear, no less, but he can't bring himself to care at all when before him, an entire den of snakes are slithering _everywhere_, twining up the shelves and climbing the steps and sliding past legs. He's killed (and eaten) enough snakes to know these aren't the poisonous kind, but still he stands there, slack-jawed and eyes brimming with an emotion he cannot name, and as servants push past him to tend to his screaming parents, he can barely contain his snickers as Stelly almost spits out a lung in trying to flail a black one coiled around his leg. It is total pandemonium; a picture of pure, unadulterated chaos that Sabo knows without a doubt can only be the brainchild of his best friend. He thinks it to be the most wonderful sight ever, but then he hears his mother, the annoying woman, shrieking in terror yet again, and when he turns his head to look he cannot help but throw his head back and _laugh_.

Smeared haphazardly on the white wall of the living room, shimmering-stark against the pale background, each letter encompassing at least half of the wall were the words:

GiVE sABO BacK

Written in Luffy's clumsy scrawl in what was probably mud and dirt, all jagged lines and overlapped letters and then below, too, written unmistakably in Ace's bold handwriting, in what possibly may or may not be blood:

SUR RENDER NOW OR ELSE

Stelly begins to sob and his father begins to curse the heavens and curse the world and curse him and this filthy, good-for-nothing, town and his filthy, good-for-nothing friends, but Sabo is grinning ear-to-ear, half-naked and proud and so full of relief and love, and he looks at his father in challenge as if to say _see, see, do you see that? Those are my brothers, my brothers, they'll fight for me_

It is only when his father gives him a malicious little quirk of his mouth and locks him in his room that he realizes with delayed horror what the earlier stunt could cause for them. He waits by the windowsill because this time he knows they'll come, and when he hears a pair of voices he'd know absolutely anywhere, he wastes no time and swings the window open, aims a punch at the dark head that rises on the other side. Ace beats him to it though, his fist colliding against Sabo's jaw, and he staggers back into the pseudo-ocean, hat slipping off.

"_Are you outta your mind?"_ they scream at each other in unison.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in his left cheek, Sabo pushes himself upright and stomps over to them, face twisted in anger and flickering in a hundred other emotions at once, raising his fist back – pulling Luffy behind him, Ace winces and waits for the impact – but then there are arms wrapping around them, pulling them close, and

"—so stupid, you damn _airheads_, _why_ would you do that, after I left to protect you and now just went and _ruined_ it and now they'll start looking for you again—" Sabo is saying, words spilling over like a broken dam. "—now they'll be after your lives more than ever. And here I thought, I thought—"

They pull away from each other, Ace silencing him with a Look. Eagerly, Luffy bounds after the huge pile of food in the corner Sabo sneaked from dinner. Ace settles on the blue rug and crosses his arms. "Look, I just thought if we pranked them enough, they'd just _have_ to let you go. They're all just a bunch of rich snobs, anyway. All they need is a little scare, and turn into screaming little girls. Don't you see, it's flawless!" Ace smirks at him, looking pleased. "Man, I am a genius," he says, almost as an afterthought

"Well, _genius_, what are you gonna do now that my father's calling is pulling out all the stops for your heads on a stick, and he isn't going to stop anytime soon,'" he huffs, and reluctantly joins him on the floor. "Bluejam is probably sharpening his ax as we speak."

"Dun wully ubow et," Luffy chimes in, bits of food spattering across his front. His face strains in concentration as he squeezes a lump of food down his throat. "They won't catch us."

"You don't know that."

"Aw, come one, Sabo," Ace frowns. "Now you have nothing to worry about, right? They're already after our lives anyway. So you don't have to stay here."

"Yeah, yeah!"

He traces silent words onto the carpet with his finger, unresponsive.

"If you want us to stop," Ace prompts. "Then just come with us."

The answer is soft, but immediate. "You know I can't."

"Well, then the war continues," Sabo's best friend makes a face that makes his freckles pop out angrily. "Why can't you come with us, anyway?"

Sabo almost tears out his hair. "Because they'll never stop!" He whirls around, catches them head first in their food and his face grows even hotter. "As long as we stay together, they'll never stop! My family loves their money too much to give it up, and I'm their ticket to keeping it, permanently. To them, your lives are _nothing_ – they will cut you down if they want to. And they do. They'll keep coming for you. And one day, they _will_ catch you, and they will _kill_ you. One day I- I'll wake up and—," he swallows, let's it hover between them. "It's a miracle they haven't caught these secret meetings of ours. After that incredibly reckless stunt, my parents will be after you more than ever, and they hate you enough as it is. Do you _understand_?"

Luffy licks the last dregs of his meal and unleashes a burp loud enough he's sure someone must be heading up to his room right now. Sabo watches, blood seething very close to the surface, as they slowly rise to their feet. Watches as his little brother skips towards him. Takes his hat and bends to place it wordlessly on Sabo's head. Grinning, Luffy leaves him baffled and spluttering on the floor.

"What—"

"Don't think I've forgiven you for lying to us," Ace says suddenly, a little twitch in the folds of his mouth, and Sabo bites his tongue. Luffy looks strange with his dark head bare like that. They head for the windowsill. Against the roiling night, they have never looked so real. "We'll come back for you, 'kay? So shut up and _sit tight_."

They disappear into the night. Sabo clutches the hat tightly on his head and digs his fingers into the grooves. He presses his mouth into a thin line; it wobbles, wavers, and he gives up – without permission the edges of his mouth curl up softly.

And for the first time in ten years, his room doesn't feel like a prison cell.

_**[five]**_

Waking up is a drowsy familiarity – the day greets him with sunlight pulling his lids apart, the shrill sound of his mother screaming stabbing his ears. He sits up groggily, and when he glances at his doorway he can still see the bulging torso of a swamp-colored croc receding from view, its mottled tail swinging contentedly. He knows it has already been fed – his brothers are stupid, but they aren't _that_ stupid to endanger his life – so there is nothing to fear. But the others don't know that, and when he laughs - almost spills his milk actually - at his family's pale, worn faces at breakfast, his father backhands him so hard the sound is like a gunshot, and everyone at the table stills.

He doesn't care. He laughs through the tears prickling in his eyes.

Later in the night, long after saying farewell to his brothers and yelping as Luffy loses footing on the ledge and falls straight and true into a heap of steaming feces four floors below, he slides the window shut and buries his face into his pillow. He wonders what it'll be tomorrow. Monkeys, he supposes, Luffy did say something about them. _Huge, crazy, stinky monkeys._ Beneath warm blankets his face stretches with a smile so hard his cheeks ache and ache and ache and he falls asleep with a dirty straw hat next to his pillow and thoughts of the sea, lungs burning with something like fire, something like hope.

_**[four]**_

"_What the hell?"_ Sabo's hand trembles weakly as it pulls to reveal a long gash that slants from Luffy's right collarbone and across his ribs. It is a sickly brown, crusted line; any deeper and Luffy would need stiches. "What is this- what the hell were you doing when this happened? _Ace!_"

Splayed against the headboard, hands crossed behind his head, Ace gnaws on his lip, his gaze fluttering from the window to his toes, but never landing on his brother's eyes. "We, uh," he begins weakly, plucking loose threads on the sheets. "Well. We were running. Idiot fell behind."

"From?" he presses. "Running from?"

A pause. "Tigers."

Beside him, Luffy makes a strangled face. "Yup."

Sabo sighs wearily, and let's the cloth of Luffy's shirt fall back over the disgusting thing. He knows his own brothers too well to know when they are lying. "I told you they'd come find you."

"Enough talk, I'm starving," Ace ignores him and scans the room for the glint of silverware; finding it, he slips of the bed, plops himself on the floor and begins to thoroughly stuff himself. The aroma of butter and garlic seeps into the air.

Sabo's forehead crumples. "Really?" he says, unimpressed, and turns to seize his little brother by the shoulders before he can gallop after and _shakes_ him. "Luffy," he says his name slowly, firmly. Looks straight into his wide eyes. "You almost got _killed_. Do you understand? Killed."

Unplugging a finger from his nose, Luffy nods.

"As in dead, killed. As in, no more meat, no more Ace, killed. As in, you-can't-be-the-Pirate-King-anymore killed. Do. You. Understand."

A grin. "I do."

Sabo grits his teeth. "No, you _don't_, because if you did – "

"No, I do." It's sure and strong, and when Luffy looks at him straight in the eye, there's something in them that makes Sabo want to stagger back, to scream, to cry. "But we're brothers."

The words die in his throat.

Sabo stares.

"So that's that," Ace says finally, settles next to a grinning Luffy and hands him a plate of his share. "So. You got more of those crunchy things?"

_**[three]**_

Nothing ever lasts.

At breakfast, Sabo watches his mother's mouth move and tries to catch the words. The air is like quicksand, and his mind flounders, sluggish and sinking. _Leaving early_. Each word is a poison dart. Her ruby-stained mouth forms around the letters, curls up along the edges. _Three more days_. Something swells up his throat, blossoms across his chest. He turns to run but realizes there is no place to do so.

_**[two]**_

"Just tonight," Ace is telling him. "You'll be back before you know it. They won't even notice."

"Sabo, _please_," Luffy stresses the last word and whines like a professional. He almost caves in. "Ace is too mean. I miss youuuu."

"What'd you say, you little shit?"

"I can't." Sabo steps back from his brothers. Ace's leg is propped up on the windowsill, the other on floor. The wind in his hair, Luffy crouches beneath the open window. There are twigs in Ace's hair and grime under Luffy's toenails, and placed against his coat and pale, starched shirt they are alien and wild and redolent of home and everything he used to be.

Ace pulls his leg back. "What?"

"No," he says quietly. "I can't."

Luffy deflates. "Why?"

"Have you already forgotten that you almost lost your lives two days ago?" The words flare up suddenly, and he clings to the anger because it is so much easier. "Just—just go back. You've had your fill, so just go. If you get hurt one more time, I swear to God I will never, ever forgive you. _Never_. So, no—"

"Gah," Ace cuts in, yet again. "You worry too much. My head hurts." Another blinding smile. "It'll be okay, alright? The plan's working. Give it a little more time, and they'll give."

Silence. "And if they don't?"

"They will," he replies easily, without skipping a beat. "I mean, did you see those rats? You could practically hear their screams all the way to the forest!"

"They were pretty big rats too. Mmmm."

"Come one, Sabo."

"Yeah! It's just one night."

Sabo lets out a long exhale. Outside the sky is bleeding ink. Luffy bobs on the soles of his feet and looks at him eagerly. Ace just glares at him. "Well, it is just _one_ night," he mumbles. His brothers whoop in victory and give each other a high-five.

"Well, come on, then, ladies – let's move!" With one hand on the edge, Ace slides out the window as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Then, Luffy mock-salutes, backflips out the window, and he, too disappears into the night. The world outside seems like a distant universe. _It's just a couple of hours_, _anyway_. He takes a step on the edge. The wind almost knocks the straw hat from his head. Before him, the town spreads out in every direction, a blur of a thousand tiny lights, like a small ocean. And beyond that, he thinks, stomach twisting, is the real one. _Just a couple of hours._

Four floors below, his brothers are smiling at him, waiting.

Just a couple of hours before—

"The hell're you waiting for, Sabo?"

"I…" He swallows. At the back of his mind Stelly's laughter begins to ring. A century passes. The wind withers around him. "Maybe… not today." The window falls shut and he and breaks and breaks and breaks.

_**[one]**_

Between night and day, the earth outside holds its breath and shivers awake, and Sabo lies wide-eyed against rumpled sheets. Aimlessly, he carves skull and bones with his eyes onto the ceiling.

The stillness becomes so unbearable that he discards any hope of sleep and slips out of bed and pads down the hall and down the staircase. Immediately, his eyes are drawn to the wall right next to the library. After days of rigorous scrubbing and scraping, it had become clear that no amount of cleansing would be able to completely erase his brothers' messages. Painting was a possible solution, and so the servants had managed to rid it of Luffy's message, but not so much Ace's, which color had strangely managed to seep through the paint and cling to the wall, transparent and lingering; the last two words however, were miraculously untouched.

OR ELSE

Sabo stares at those words. Perhaps the servants had realized the futility of it all. Somewhere a blue jay begins to sing. It is but minutes into a new day. Sabo stares. Remembers Ace and Luffy and three cups of promises on a rotting stump back home.

Or else. A lump materializes in his throat. Something inside him snaps.

"Dammit," he chokes out and without a second thought begins running barefoot out into town, past pockets of fading light and shifting, gray shapes; into the foggy poison-filled air of the dump, running, running, running – into the forest now, chest burning, heaving, feet stinging and drenched with dirt . . . the world shivers into a humming blur – over a boulder, and up, up, up, a century-old tree and then—

There. He crumples to his knees. In the darkness, two figures are lying curled up against each other. On his hands and feet, he crawls towards them in the gloom. The planks groan beneath him. It is like sliding into the shadow of a dream. He wriggles into the crack between their bodies, slowly, ever so slowly, tucks his face against the sweet curve of Luffy's soft neck and settles his back into Ace's warm chest. He can feel the steady beat against his ribs, Luffy's breath against his hair. Luffy makes a noise; it vibrates against his nose – and simultaneously a rubbery arm stretches right over their bodies and melds them together, and Ace's leg comes to rest over Sabo's ankle. Then, carefully, carefully – he almost forgot – he eases the hat from his head and places it on the side of his little brother's face.

And Luffy smiles – Sabo stiffens as if he can feel it – like he'd known he'd come all along.

Tucked against his neck, he allows himself to break.

_**[zero]**_

The sky is a wide, gold sheet. Servants hobble around the deck like clockwork. Sabo steps up on the edge and tries to see below the waves.

By now the island is nothing but a relic, long gone between sea and sky and fading fast into waves beyond. He looks up; a storm is fast approaching, and someone reminds him to take shelter within the ship. He waves him away, bends forward and leans even further into the edge, the wind snatching his top hat right into its fingers. He watches it flutter, tumble up, up, up and then down to disappear beneath gilded foam.

The sea looks cold, and endless, and inviting.

"Run, run," he whispers.


End file.
